"As a faculty member, you need to be able to see how you're judged and how you've done so far."
That was from an article in the Chronicle and just goes to show you how deeply ingrained the slave mentality is. The faculty member is referring to Data Analytics, a programme costing a cool half a million dollars over four years, that "adds up" the various features of research to generate a number that indicates "productivity". The Americans have got this down to a tee.
One strand of criticism focuses on the distorting effects 'quantification' will produce since faculty will be encouraged to game the system, producing more articles rather than books (for example). Also, means 'targeting' particular journals and following specific lines of inquiry (notably: what is 'do-able' and what is currently fashionable).
All of that obviously needs to be said. But what is missed here is the key point: why should anyone think that thinking can and should be reduced to numbers? This question obviously leads us to the next: in whose interest is it that knowledge be reduced this way?
And here I think we're getting to the heart of it. This is not just about administrative control but really something much deeper: the way in which capitalism is constantly trying to tap into and siphon off value from "non-market" sectors. The 'knowledge economy' is a case in point. But how do you put a contract , a number, on what is something that essentially and assiduously avoids all categorization?
This is not just about making students into consumers or investors-which is what they've become. But it's really more about how the very idea of knowledge must be brought into line with the idea of service to the machine. Instead of being places of resistance universities themselves contribute to the fragmentation of value. The profession itself has been decimated by thirty years of neo-liberalism and is now dominated, you suspect, by gamesmanship, careerism and an obsession with bringing in the dough (grants etc.)
Over here, in the land of the pure, one school has just received over 50 million Rs for work on "Islamic Finance" even though no one has the foggiest idea what is meant by that term. Listening to a very senior colleague.."we don't care if we have to teach Islamic Marketing, Islamic accounting, as long as it brings the money in." Well, there you go: that's the truth of it in a nutshell.
That was from an article in the Chronicle and just goes to show you how deeply ingrained the slave mentality is. The faculty member is referring to Data Analytics, a programme costing a cool half a million dollars over four years, that "adds up" the various features of research to generate a number that indicates "productivity". The Americans have got this down to a tee.
One strand of criticism focuses on the distorting effects 'quantification' will produce since faculty will be encouraged to game the system, producing more articles rather than books (for example). Also, means 'targeting' particular journals and following specific lines of inquiry (notably: what is 'do-able' and what is currently fashionable).
All of that obviously needs to be said. But what is missed here is the key point: why should anyone think that thinking can and should be reduced to numbers? This question obviously leads us to the next: in whose interest is it that knowledge be reduced this way?
And here I think we're getting to the heart of it. This is not just about administrative control but really something much deeper: the way in which capitalism is constantly trying to tap into and siphon off value from "non-market" sectors. The 'knowledge economy' is a case in point. But how do you put a contract , a number, on what is something that essentially and assiduously avoids all categorization?
This is not just about making students into consumers or investors-which is what they've become. But it's really more about how the very idea of knowledge must be brought into line with the idea of service to the machine. Instead of being places of resistance universities themselves contribute to the fragmentation of value. The profession itself has been decimated by thirty years of neo-liberalism and is now dominated, you suspect, by gamesmanship, careerism and an obsession with bringing in the dough (grants etc.)
Over here, in the land of the pure, one school has just received over 50 million Rs for work on "Islamic Finance" even though no one has the foggiest idea what is meant by that term. Listening to a very senior colleague.."we don't care if we have to teach Islamic Marketing, Islamic accounting, as long as it brings the money in." Well, there you go: that's the truth of it in a nutshell.
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